170 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



in the concern will elect Tom, Dick or Harry, without much dis- 

 tinction or compunction, trouble little about the choice of com- 

 mittee and council men, eye the balance sheet with comparative in- 

 difference, and stretch any number of points in the dealing out of 

 credit not to disoblige his neighbours. Probably he will not even 

 take the trouble to watch affairs, nor care to attend society meetings. 

 Make the liability unlimited, and all this at once becomes changed. 

 Through self-interest, since our member may be made to pay, all 

 those faculties are awakened and kept tense which we want to 

 enable the bank to obtain and deal out its money, because, so armed, 

 it will be able to answer for repayment. Once more, being made 

 unlimited, liability will make members scrutinise applying candidates 

 carefully, make them consider well whom to elect to any office, to 

 study the balance sheets which are mostly — as often as the com- 

 mittee meets — hung up in the registered office for inspection at 

 will by members. It will make them inquire who are the borrowers 

 and watch such men, to make sure that they employ their loans as 

 was agreed upon and continue to lead a creditable life, that the 

 repayments come in in proper time, insist on strictness in the obser- 

 vance of conditions and help to keep everything safe and shipshape, 

 so far as they can. There can be no idea of pelf in the bank. There 

 being no shares — at any rate to speak of — there can be no dividend 

 nor any other pickings. The officers are required to perform their 

 duties — which in a small society are, after all, not over-exacting — 

 gratuitously. Terms for loans must, of course, be so fixed as to 

 keep the bank on the right side, with some margin over. However, 

 that overplus does not go into members' pockets, but goes wholly 

 into a collective fund, which must not be shared out in any case, 

 not even in the event of the bank being wound up — lest it be wound 

 up for the sake of the spoils. It serves as reserve fund and, as it 

 goes on accumulating, as a property of the bank which will enable 

 it eventually to dispense with further borrowing. 



Thus, assuming that all rules laid down are faithfully observed, 

 every crevice seems closed against rapacity and abuse. And there 

 is, figuratively speaking, a tree planted, like that of Nebuchad- 

 nezzar's dream, giving grateful shade and shedding nourishing fruit 

 all round. 



The benefit of the credit made available for long terms does not 

 end with the single borrower. It is these banks which have ad- 

 vanced large sums for the purchase of implements, the financing of 

 co-operative dairies and other co-operative societies for the utilisa- 

 tion of agricultural produce— repaying themselves in the latter case 



